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'Mind Maps' Exhibit Hacked: A Case Of Guerrilla Curation?

An unexpected addition to the <em>Mind Maps</em> exhibit at London's Science Museum, the result of vandalism.
Courtesy of Phil Loring
An unexpected addition to the Mind Maps exhibit at London's Science Museum, the result of vandalism.

Mind Maps: Stories from Psychology is a current exhibit at London's Science Museum. Co-sponsored by the British Psychological Society (BPS), it explores our understanding of the human mind through 250 years of mental health diagnosis and treatment.

When the exhibition's lead curator arrived to give a tour last Thursday, he found a surprise amidst the displays on mesmerism, electroconvulsive therapy and other tricks and treatments of the psychologist's craft: a dummy head topped with a colander.

The fake addition to the exhibit was accompanied by an informative label explaining the device's impressive effects, including protection against mind reading.

A close-up of the label accompanying the fake addition to the museum exhibit pictured above.
/ Courtesy of Phil Loring
/
Courtesy of Phil Loring
A close-up of the label accompanying the fake addition to the museum exhibit pictured above.

Museum security may not have been pleased, but Phil Loring, the BPS Curator of Psychology at the museum, couldn't help being amused. He shared the following reaction:

Today's curators care a lot about what we call 'co-curation,' or involving people outside the museum in decisions about what goes on display. This intervention, however, is probably better described as guerrilla curation, or hacking. While we can't condone it, I was genuinely tickled by how lovingly it mimicked a traditional museum label, complete with fake inventory number and source, and by how well it complemented the Mind Maps exhibition. Psychology has always been emerging from a boisterous cloud of slightly bonkers ideas, and for me, as a historian of science, that's exactly what makes it so fascinating.

Indeed. Part of what made the addition such a good fit for the exhibit is that, like many classic theories from psychology, a colander is full of holes.


You can keep up with more of what Tania Lombrozo is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Tania Lombrozo is a contributor to the NPR blog 13.7: Cosmos & Culture. She is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as an affiliate of the Department of Philosophy and a member of the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences. Lombrozo directs the Concepts and Cognition Lab, where she and her students study aspects of human cognition at the intersection of philosophy and psychology, including the drive to explain and its relationship to understanding, various aspects of causal and moral reasoning and all kinds of learning.